


Bound to Please

by akaparalian



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alpha Alec Lightwood, Alpha Magnus Bane, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Bookstore Owner Alec Lightwood, Bookstores, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 17:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17812259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: Alec owns a bookstore. Magnus needs to buy some books. There would be absolutely nothing wrong if not for the fact that Magnus is specifically looking for books about rutting, and if he weren't the most beautiful alpha that Alec has ever seen.





	Bound to Please

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to finally be posting this!!! I've been picking at this fic for a long time now, and decided to finally finish it up for 3B Countdown, a decision which I am _very_ pleased with. I had a great time with it, and hopefully y'all will have a great time reading it -- I can't believe we're finally so close to 3B!
> 
> As always, you can find me on [Twitter,](http://twitter.com/akaparalian) [Tumblr,](http://floralegia.tumblr.com) and [Dreamwidth,](http://akaparalian.dreamwidth.org) where this will be cross-posted.

When the bell over the door tinkles charmingly to let Alec know he’s got a customer, he’s on his knees and elbow-deep in a box of kids’ picture books, donations from a sweet beta woman whose kid has outgrown them. She had been nice and all, but she’d stacked the books in the box kind of helter-skelter, _and_ they’d gotten a bit knocked around in transit, so it’s taking a little longer than he’d like to stack them neatly and make sure that they’re all in okay condition. He’s kind of preoccupied, is the point, so he just glances over his shoulder in the vague direction of the door and calls, “Be with you in a minute!”

There’s a vaguely affirmative noise, and then footsteps leading off towards the nonfiction side of the store, it sounds like. Alec finishes sorting out the box he’s working on as quickly as he can — it’s always nice to get a whole box of donations, especially because kids’ books sell like hotcakes, but intake and shelving a whole bunch of new shit at once, all on his own, can be tedious and also kind of an enormous pain — and then pushes himself up off the ground and turns to look for his customer, which is when a wall of scent nearly knocks his lights out.

God. Whoever this is — and they’re turned around, thumbing over the spines of books on the Health and Wellness shelf a few aisles away, so he hasn’t yet had a chance to get a good look at them — they smell… Even from this distance, they smell really, truly, _incredibly_ good. So good that Alec takes a second while their attention is fully not on him to just fucking gape, wondering how awkward it is to kinda-sorta scent a stranger from across the room, wondering if it makes it any more excusable when they smell like _that_. Warm, and kind of spicy, and kind of woody, and — 

“Uh,” he says, fully without any kind of input from his brain, just struck absolutely dumb by the current proceedings, and then he has to scramble for the rest of the sentence, stuttering, “Uh, can — can I help you find anything?”

The stranger turns around smoothly at the sound of his voice, and then freezes and blinks, taking a sharp breath in. Alec mirrors the stifled half-gasp when he gets a good look at the guy’s face. He’s — God, he’s gorgeous, and Alec is struck dumb once again as they stare at each other for a moment. His eyes are unbelievable, a sort of honey-brown color that’s almost gold, and rimmed in black eyeliner, and fucking hell Alec has _got_ to get his train of thought back under control before he makes an absolute ass out of himself by saying something stupid, like _you smell perfect_ or _you’re the hottest thing I think I’ve ever seen_ or —

“I was looking for books about rutting,” the stranger says, and Alec actually feels the moment when his heart stops beating. Because now he’s looking at this gorgeous stranger, who’s just enough shorter than him that Alec would have to bend over slightly to scent his neck, and who smells _divine,_ and he’s thinking about ruts. Rutting. Being in a rut. And all of the things that come with ruts, and rutting, and being in a rut.

Like knots.

Alec is not typically the kind of person who finds himself completely blindsided by thinking about a stranger’s knot.

_God_ he hopes he doesn’t smell as turned on as he suddenly, undeniably is. 

“Um, I actually have an alpha health section on the other side of that shelf,” he says, pointing, and then crossing the distance between them to lead the way, pinching his thigh to stop himself from scenting the air when he brushes the guy’s shoulder. He forces himself to focus on the titles in front of him instead, nodding to himself as he scans; this isn’t a section of the store that generally gets a ton of attention, because his store doesn’t generally see a ton of alpha customers. Reading and books, as Alec has been told since childhood, are Not An Alpha Thing. Usually the only people who come in looking for alpha health books are parents whose children have just presented, or something, not — not — 

_Beautiful people need advice sometimes too,_ Alec tells himself, and finally spots the book he’s looking for. 

“Here, this might help,” he says. “Covers pretty much everything, and a good balance of, you know, being medically correct and specific, but still being readable.”

“A little geek speak doesn’t bother me,” the guy assures him as he takes the book. Alec tries desperately to convince himself that he’s not disappointed when their fingers don’t brush. 

“Well, then it should be perfect,” he replies. “I mean — uh, I hope. If there was something more specific you were, uh, looking for, I have a couple more narrow-focused things as well, but I’ll let you… have a look for yourself. Um.” He hovers, knowing that it’s already awkward as hell to be recommending books to a stranger that essentially amount to sex advice — though there’s more to rut than that, blah blah blah, et cetera — but absolutely dreading the thought of walking away from this man, from his _scent_ , from the way he sways just slightly into Alec’s space, just enough to be barely, barely perceptible.

“I’ll have a look around,” the stranger says, and it’s clearly a dismissal, but his voice is warm and kind of low and — okay, on second thought, maybe getting a little bit of distance is a really, really, really good idea. Now. Right now.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Alec more or less chokes out, and then he bolts straight to the back room, because at least that way there’s a door between them.

_Okay_ , he thinks as soon as the door swishes shut behind him. Okay, deep breaths; in here, the air just smells like old books and filtered, air-conditioned goodness, not like something warm and delicious and just dark enough to make him shiver. He can take a few breaths, and when he goes back out he’ll bring a box with him to make it hopefully look like he went into the back for a real, actual purpose and not because he was running away from the concepts of rut and scent and —

Motherfucker.

How did he not realize it immediately? _That’s_ at least part of why that guy smells so good — he’s coming up on his rut, maybe a week or so out. It’s that pre-pre-rut scent, just creeping in under the edge of one’s usual smell, and under normal circumstances it’s really barely noticeable, but. 

But Alec is familiar enough with smelling the first hints of rut on Izzy and Jace to be able to recognize it pretty easily (pros of growing up in a house chock full of alphas, he supposes). But he’s always had a pretty keen nose (keen enough that it’s annoying, honestly, but it has helped him ward off problem customers before they can actually become a problem a few times, so it turns out to have its uses in small business ownership). But he was paying extra attention to this guy’s smell — scenting him, even if from a distance (and sure, maybe that’s kind of weird, kind of creepy, and the guy is a _customer_ , or at least a potential customer, but Alec can’t remember the last time he caught a whiff of someone’s scent and they smelled _that_ good, that _right_. He’s not sure it’s ever been like that before).

And all of that adds up to the fact that, subtle or not, now that he’s puzzled it out, he’s sure about it. And being sure about it is…

He thinks for half a second about texting Izzy, then immediately discards the idea, because what would he even _say_ , and also because, as he tells himself sternly, he’s being an idiot. Or at least an asshole. God, he’s acting like _he’s_ the one about to rut, or, worse, like he’s actually rutting, all needy and turned on over nothing and scenting a stranger. Customer. Strange customer.

He’s not some knothead, and he’s suddenly, immediately horrified by the way he’s acting. Christ. Sure, the smell took him by surprise, and sure, the guy’s rutting soon and Alec can tell, and sure, he came in looking for books about ruts and brought the thought to the forefront of Alec’s mind — but Alec is a fucking adult, and he’s going to handle this like one.

So he takes one last, deep breath of familiar, neutral back room air, grabs the nearest box of books waiting to be shelved, and shoulders the door back open.

The guy’s still over by the alpha health stuff; Alec can just see the top of his head over the shelf, his dark hair spiked up and tipped in a lighter color, closer to amber, or maybe caramel. Alec can smell him, too, as soon as he opens the door, but he’s in better control of himself now, so he just walks behind the counter to start sorting through his box of books.

_Right_ , he thinks as he flips open the box. This is a load he got from the library. They do book sales every once in a while to get rid of their duds — stuff no one checks out anymore, or maybe never did — and Alec always goes, because after running this shop for the past six years and change, he has a pretty good idea of what, out of the weird and old stuff that isn’t big with the library’s clientele, still stands at least a decent chance of selling if he puts it on the shelf.

Anyway, a bunch of library books is a great distraction right now, because library books take a good bit of prep work before he can sell them: removing the clear plastic covers over the dust jackets where applicable, peeling or scraping stickers off the spines where he can, taking out the checkout cards and pockets from the older books. And then he gets around to doing the things he has to do for _any_ books, pricing them, sorting them into stacks to be shelved in their respective sections, and it’s only when he’s mostly done with the whole box that someone clears their throat from a few feet away, and he jumps.

It’s the same guy, obviously, because there’s no one else here, and fuck it all, Alec’s blindsided all over again for just a few seconds, his mouth almost falling open as he stares. The guy’s got the book Alec had recommended for him, as well as about half a dozen others, and they’re not all from the alpha health section — there are a couple of mystery novels stacked in his arms, too, the kind that sort of border on thriller, and a popular memoir than came out a few months ago. 

“Find everything okay?” Alec asks, not yet shifting over to the register, because his knees, unfortunately, feel a little weak. 

“I did,” the guy replies, setting his books down on the counter near the register, so Alec steels himself, prays he doesn’t do something monumentally stupid like stumble, and moves to ring him up.

He _doesn’t_ stumble, thank God, but he does feel himself flush a little when the guy continues, “And thank you for the recommendation, in particular. It can be… challenging to find good material on ruts that isn’t just, you know, knock-off Cosmo sex tips, or focused only on rutting with omegas. I really appreciate a more… neutral take.”

Alec tries, very, very desperately, to somehow not let his heartbeat speed up at the thought that this guy isn’t only interested in omegas. The idea that he’d ever, ever be interested in _Alec_ is still a shot in the dark, but — look, it’s hard enough to find alphas that are interested in other alphas. Limiting it beyond that to alpha men who are interested in other alpha men? Well. Dating has been a little bit like trying to find a needle in a particularly disorganized and chaotic haystack. Izzy gives him shit sometimes for not really seeing people all that often, but _she’s_ got it easy; her dating pool is easily ten times the size of his, and she’s gorgeous and actually knows how to talk to people. Alec, meanwhile, mostly wears black because he’s not altogether sure how to match colors otherwise and hasn’t socialized with anyone he’s not related to in months.

Besides, even _if_ this guy is into not only alphas, but male alphas — if Alec’s not reading way too much into that one little comment — he’s also drop-dead gorgeous, and dressed in a way that seems to heavily imply money, and way, way, way out of Alec’s league.

And a customer.

And also Alec still doesn’t know his name.

God, he should at least… say something back. “Um,” he tries, as the guy slides his stack of books across the counter for Alec to ring up. “Um, I’m glad I could help. I know what you mean, really, about — yeah. I always try to keep an eye out for good stuff to stock, even though we don’t get a ton of alphas in here, to be honest.”

Alec wonders for a split second if that’s not a weird thing to say to an alpha customer who is very much here, right now, at the present moment, but the guy laughs, though it’s a little rueful. “It makes you wonder if we’re not still back in the stone age sometimes, doesn’t it? There are some people out there who really seem to think alphas don’t know how to do anything but flex and huff, let alone sit around with some sort of _sedentary_ hobby. God forbid.”

“You should have seen my father’s face when I told him I wanted to open a bookstore,” Alec groans, a little surprised by how easy he finds it to let that slip — he’s still not exactly _over_ all of Robert Lightwood’s incessant alpha-complex bullshit — but also not surprised at all, given how warm and open the customer’s face is, how genuinely sympathetic it looks when he grimaces. “I mean, how horrible for an alpha to know how to _read_ , right? Literacy is too soft and delicate a skill, clearly.”

“Well, I for one am grateful that you didn’t let that stop you,” the guy says in response, as Alec finishes ringing up his books and accepts his offered credit card. “You’ve been a big help… Alec,” he adds, clearly reading it off of Alec’s nametag. 

Alec doesn’t even bother trying to fight down a little grin, though he does do his best to ignore the butterflies fluttering in his stomach, desperately trying to remind him that this guy seriously smells better than, like, anyone ever, and he implied he might maybe possibly be interested in alphas, and isn’t he just so fucking _gorgeous?_

“Glad I could help…?” he replies, sliding the stack of books back across the counter with the receipt, leaving the statement hanging like a question because he doesn’t want to check the guy’s credit card for his name. Reading someone’s name off a nametag is one thing; that’s what nametags are _for_. Reading it off his card just feels weird to Alec. 

The guy looks at him in confusion for just a second, but then his brow smooths out and he smiles, and Alec has to look away, becuase _holy shit,_ talk about blindingly beautiful. Mother of God. 

“Oh!” the guy says, sounding a little pleased. “Right, _I’m_ not wearing a nametag. I’m Magnus.”

“Glad I could help, then, Magnus,” Alec says, proud of the fact that he only sounds a little strangled as he tries to pretend he’s busying himself with something behind the counter rather than staring openly at Magnus as he signs the receipt the way he kind of wants to.

“Have a good day,” Magnus offers, plunking his pen back in the cup and gathering his books before straightening up. “And can I just say — I think your shop is just wonderful.”

“Thanks,” Alec replies, still fighting desperately to control his blush and keep himself from getting tongue-tied. “Um, and, you have a good day too.”

Magnus gives him a jaunty little wave as he walks out the door, and then all at once, he’s gone. Alec slumps forward onto the counter, leaning on his elbows, and lets his head hang down for just a minute, waiting for his heart rate to go at least _mostly_ back to normal. 

—

The rest of the day is _way_ less eventful, and by the time Alec’s closing up for the night, he’s managed to mostly convince himself that the thing with Magnus was just a random, wonderful blip in the grand scheme of his life, and there’s no point daydreaming about it all the way home and wondering if, maybe, Magnus will come in again sometime. 

And then he daydreams about it all the way home anyway, and runs through the list of books Magnus had bought in his head about seven times, trying to get a feel for what he’s interested in, so that — just in case he does come back, of course — Alec will know what to recommend, or if maybe he should start trying to get in some more mysteries so that he’s got a wider variety to choose from…

He knows he’s being ridiculous, obviously, but it’s hard not to be. He _really_ doesn’t date much — his last boyfriend had been back in college, for fuck’s sake, and Steve had _never_ smelled as good to him as Magnus had this afternoon, not even when they’d shared a rut and both been half-dopey with hormones.

It’s just as well that he goes a couple of days without really seeing Izzy or Jace or anyone he knows especially well, just getting up, working, getting takeout, and reading until bed, only talking to customers. Random strangers, or even regulars that he kind of-sort of knows, he can no doubt fool into thinking he’s always this… Whatever he is right now. Besotted, maybe, except that makes his passing crush on a man he’s met once for all of fifteen minutes sound even stupider than it already is. His siblings — and probably even Clary, if Jace had brought her around, or Simon, or any of the other friends-of-friends he can pretty safely count as part of his social circle — would have seen through him in a heartbeat.

He holds out hope that Magnus will come in again — maybe he’ll have already read through all those books and need more; maybe he’s hoping Alec will have some new or different alpha health stuff in stock; maybe… But the days pass, one blending into the next pretty seamlessly, and he doesn’t come back, because of course he doesn’t. Most people don’t go to the bookstore multiple times in a week. Even _Alec_ doesn’t do that, and he _owns_ a bookstore. (Well — he goes to his own multiple times a week. Obviously. Because it’s… where he works. But that’s different. Even in college, when Izzy teased him about living on ramen because of how much of his budget was going toward books, he didn’t go book shopping as often as his subconscious is hoping that Magnus does.) 

When closing time on Friday night rolls around, he finds himself glancing out the front window just a little bit more often than usual as he gets ready to head out for the night, sweeping and closing out the register and fussing a little bit over the shelves to make sure everything is ready to go for tomorrow morning. He _knows_ he’s being ridiculous, especially since it had smelled like Magnus’ rut was coming up — the more time goes on, the less likely it is that he’ll come in, really. Or at least Alec fucking hopes so; attractive and charming or no, the last thing he wants is someone in rut in his store. Jesus. That would be… He’d had a young omega come in _way_ too close to the start of their heat one time, and that had been bad enough. It had also convinced him once and for all that he absolutely is not interested in omegas, but _that_ is neither here nor there.

Right as he’s finishing stocking a shelf over in the corner of the store that he’s dedicated to fantasy and sci-fi, he hears the tell-tale sound of the door swishing open, and since he’s already locked up, he knows there’s a very limited list of people who it could be. That doesn’t stop his heart from kind of jumping, though, or stop him from standing up and spinning around just a little bit too quickly.

“Hey, bud,” he calls when he sees who’s trotting toward him, and tries to ignore the guilty swoop in his abdomen at seeing his baby brother coming over when he’d just been thinking about — well. Nothing he wants to talk to Max about until he’s older, that’s for sure. Or maybe not ever, come to think of it. “Hey, Iz,” he adds, and prays that none of his thoughts are showing too clearly on his face, or in his scent. “I didn’t know you guys were planning on stopping by.”

“How’s it going? We were in the neighborhood,” Izzy tells him, as she walks over to him at a much slower pace than their kid brother. Well — not so much a kid anymore, but still; Max gives Alec what must be the appropriate kind of one-armed hug to give your older brother, balancing teenage aloofness with just the right amount of touchy-feely sibling affection. 

“I was just finishing up here,” Alec says, leaning in for a much more full-body hug from Isabelle once Max lets him go. “You two on your way home?” 

Izzy nods. She picks Max up after his extracurriculars, most days; it’s kind of late — past seven — but Max is closing in on high school graduation, so he’s been pretty damn busy. “We were gonna get dinner, since Mom’s out of town. We thought you might like to join us.”

“Sure,” Alec says, grinning at her, then at Max. The expression feels loose and easy; he’s surrounded by a cloud of happy familial scents, and he is fucking _starving_ , now that he stops to think about it, so the prospect of food sounds pretty incredible, not to mention that it’s been several days since he really got to spend any time with either of them. Which reminds him — “Did you ask Jace, too?”

“Texted him,” Izzy replies, pulling out her phone to wave it in emphasis. “He said he’s bringing Clary, too. He’s going to meet us at Taki’s.”

As expected. Jace has been mated for almost two years now, the first in their family to find a mate, after a lightning-quick courtship that had raised… well, more than a couple of eyebrows amongst friends and family. Still, no one can argue that he and Clary aren’t ridiculously in love. Actually, ‘sickeningly’ might be a better word.

“Let’s go, then,” Alec says, taking one last sweeping glance around the store and nodding decisively. Everything that needs to be ready is ready; everything else will keep. There are a few more things he would’ve done if his siblings hadn’t showed up, but nothing important enough to keep him now that they’re here.

“You sure?” Izzy asks, but when he nods, she hooks an arm around Max — who, in the two minutes Alec and Izzy have been talking, has distracted himself with a somewhat battered copy of some ‘70s swords and sorcery type thing from the bottom of the sci-fi/fantasy shelf — and starts to drag him back towards the door, moving with a distinct sense of purpose. “Then let’s get moving!”

“You forgot to eat lunch again, didn’t you?” Alec asks as he follows behind, torn between mild exasperation and fond amusement at her tendency to get so caught up in work that she blows right through her lunch period. He could be wrong, but it would certainly explain how eager she seems to be to get on the road.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

From under her arm, Max peeks over his shoulder back at Alec and nods, expression deadpan. 

“Uh-huh,” Alec says, rolling his eyes back at Max and shaking his head fondly as he shuts off the lights. “It’s definitely not my business, becuase you’re definitely not going to try to make me pay more than my fair share for dinner when you eat like three plates of appetizers and insist we should all split the cost because they were ‘for the table.’”

“Exactly,” she replies primly, holding the door open for him and then using the spare key he gave her all the way back when he bought the place to lock it behind him. “Clearly we’re on the same page.”

“Clearly.”

“We parked down the street,” Max says, pointing and shrugging his way out from under Izzy’s arm altogether as he fusses with the lock. 

“‘We parked,’ he says,” Isabelle sighs, jogging a little to catch up to him and ruffling his hair the way he’s never let her do, even when he was actually small and not just small in the eyes of his twenty-something siblings. “When are you going to learn how to drive yourself so that I don’t have to pick you up and play chauffeur all the time, huh?”

“I’ll add that to my to-do list, right after ‘flip water bottles’ and ‘eat Tide pods,’” Max shoots back, batting frantically at her hands to try and stop her from ruining what seems to be one of those hairstyles that’s meant to look effortless but actually takes about six tons of product.

“You Gen Z kids are all the same,” Alec deadpans, though the effect is ruined a bit by the way he can’t stop himself from smiling at them. “When I was your age, we had to drive uphill both ways through a snowstorm the minute we turned sixteen, and we _liked_ it.”

“Oh, shut up, you guys aren’t _that_ old.” 

“Implying that we _are_ old, just not quite as old as all that?”

“You said it, not me.”

—

Taki’s is bustling when they get there; it’s the tail end of the dinner rush, looks like, with people starting to gravitate more toward the bar at the back of the room than the tables spread throughout. It’s a seat-yourself grill-pub kind of place, and popular enough that finding seating at this time of night can be a bit tricky, but before Alec even has time to worry about finding a table big enough to fit all of them, he hears Jace’s voice above the din.

“Over here!”

Sure enough, Alec, Izzy, and Max all turn to see Jace and Clary tucked away in a corner, with two four-top tables jammed together. One of them is leaning at a truly dubious angle, but that kind of thing just comes with the territory here, so Alec’s not too worried.

He leads the way through the crowded dining room to where Jace’s blonde hair and Clary’s bright ginger waves are standing out like precious metals amidst a sea of strangers. They’re sitting huddled close together on one side of the table; even from across the room, Alec can see the way Jace grins when Clary leans over to whisper something in his ear. He’d always kind of thought that couples were supposed to sit across from each other — that was certainly how his parents had always done it, though maybe treating Maryse and Robert as a blueprint for a happy and successful relationship isn’t the best idea, There’s a reason they got divorced, after all. Jace and Clary, though, in all the time that Alec has known them as a couple, have always sat side by side, as though to be that much closer together, like the expanse of the tabletop would keep them much to far apart.

...Jesus. It really _has_ been a while since he’s had a boyfriend, hasn’t it? First the stupid rapidfire crush, and now this. Alec shakes himself a little and quickens his steps.

“Finally,” Jace says when he sits down, reaching across the table to clap Alec on the upper arm companionably. “I was starting to think you three were never going to show.” 

“Don’t be dramatic,” Izzy says, arriving at the table just behind Alec. “We’re not even late.”

“Later than me is automatically late,” Jace counters, and honestly, with his track record, Alec’s inclined to give him that one, snorting a laugh under his breath. Jace grins at him, then turns that megawatt smile on Max, the last one to make his way to the table. “Hey, squirt.”

“Hey, asshole,” Max returns immediately. It’s a stock exchange for the two of them, capped off by Jace laughing and reaching across the table for a fistbump while Alec, Izzy, and Clary roll their eyes more or less in unison.

There’s a short, comfortable mostly-silence while they all get settled. Taki’s is a favorite Lightwood family haunt; they more or less don’t _actually_ need to look at the menu anymore, but Izzy, as expected, is paging through the appetizers with a contemplative look on her face, and Alec always checks through just in case there’s something new in there since the last time he came, and Clary and Jace are arguing over the beer list because they always end up sharing their drinks and Jace wants to order something Clary thinks is going to be disgusting, so for a little while, at least, everyone’s occupied with food and drink-related tasks. By the time they’ve all ordered, Jace is leaning back in his chair so far that Alec would be worried he was going to fall on his ass if this weren’t par for the course, Max is doing something on his phone, frowning a little, and Clary and Izzy have struck up a conversation across the table about some ongoing drama at Clary’s job that Izzy is apparently clued in on. Alec mostly lets his mind wander, just soaking in the feeling of being around people he loves in a familiar, well-liked environment, and the knowledge that there’s good food coming his way very soon.

It’s then, of course, that he looks across the room and sees Magnus at the bar.

He does a double take, certain at first that he must be mistaken; maybe he’s just seeing things, his brain filling in some stupid half-baked fantasy of running into the guy again, getting to know him a little better. But, no, there he is; he’s a bit more dressed up than he had been at the store the other day, but then, he’s out on a Friday night rather than running an errand at a bookstore, so of course he is. He looks absolutely stunning, regardless. There’s no way to smell him from all the way across the room, not with all the people in between them, especially, but — God, Alec can still almost _feel_ his scent, and the memory alone is enough to have him flushing a little as he hurriedly looks away, staring down at the top of the table.

Shit, but Magnus must be very, very close now to the start of his rut. He’d smelled decently close to it before — enough so that it was pretty obvious — and it’s been a few days since then; even if he’s one of those people who starts giving off rut-scent pretty early, he’s bound to be right on the edge of it by now. Unbidden, Alec glances across the room at him again, a little curl of concern blooming in his stomach; as he watches, Magnus throws his head back, laughing. He looks energetic, but loose in his shoulders, easy. Not tense. Besides, he seems to be with friends. He’s fine, Alec tells himself, totally fine. He probably doesn’t want a nearly-stranger barging over there and making things awkward asking if he’s okay, anyway.

Still, Alec finds it harder and harder as the night goes on to keep his focus on his siblings. Magnus stays at the bar as they eat, though every time Alec gives in and checks it seems like another one of his friends has left, and the longer things go on, the more Alec’s neck prickles, and the more he feels himself growing tense with the urge to go over there and — what? Say hi? He wouldn’t, normally he _really_ wouldn’t, but Magnus is just… Alec’s rarely met people that beautiful, not to mention that the little Alec had seen of his personality had been so effortlessly charming that he almost can’t believe it, looking back. And the way he _smells…_

“Are you okay, Alec?” Clary asks after about thirty minutes of a level of distraction that has to be abundantly obvious to all of them. “You seem really out of it.”

He shrugs, ducking his head a little guiltily. “Yeah, yeah, fine. Sorry. Just, uh…” He waves a hand, searching for something to say that’s not an outright lie — in no small part because he knows that every single person around him would probably see right through it if he tried — but that also isn’t horrifically embarrassing. Finally, he settles on, “There was just this, uh, guy at work, it’s not a big thing. Don’t worry about it.”

Jace wriggles his eyebrows. “A guy, or a _guy?_ ”

Alec glares at him and says, “Shut up,” which appears to be all the confirmation Jace needs. He crows with delight, leaning across the table to shove lightly at Alec’s shoulder. Izzy looks excited too, crossing her legs and propping an elbow on the table, with a decidedly interrogative gleam in her eye. Alec groans, curses himself soundly in his head, and tenses for whatever fucking onslaught he’s just brought down upon himself.

“What kind of guy are we talking?” Jace asks. “I mean, let’s think about your type, from previous examples — uh, tall, kind of boring, nerdy —”

“That’s not fair, Pascal was the only boring one, and he was years and years ago,” Izzy says, in a tone of voice that implies that she thinks that this is an entirely reasonable thing to say. Alec gets that she’s trying to defend him, at least in theory, but _Jesus._

“Shut up,” Alec says, for a second time, and it’s not any more effective on Jace than it was the first time, but his glare, at least, seems to work a little better this time around, because Jace does actually hold his hands up in surrender, smirking. He means well, Alec reminds himself. They all do. He just… it’s hard enough not getting his hopes up and his heart all twisted in knots over some stupid crush without his siblings teasing him about Magnus, who he has met all of _once_ , while he’s sitting right there across the room.

Alec sighs, quietly, in and then out through his nose; the conversation moves on around him, in spite of him, really, and he quietly shreds a napkin, frowning a little. Max shoots him a little concerned look, because he has maybe the most emotional sensitivity out of any Lightwood ever, but Alec waves him off. It’s nothing. He just… maybe he should just get a little distance, a little air.

Unbidden, his eyes dart across the room to the bar, and he bites his lip.

Unlike Jace and Clary, he hasn’t had several beers over the course of the meal; unlike Isabelle, he doesn’t have to drive home after. So, somewhat against his own better judgement, he mutters, “I’m, uh, going to the bar,” and slips away before anyone can say anything.

He second-guesses it about halfway across the room, and then again right as he’s about to sit down at the bar, but both times he convinces himself to keep going anyway. It’s not weird, he tells himself, and sits at the far end of the bar from where Magnus now appears to be alone. It’s not weird, he just wants a drink, and it’s not like he’s — he’s not going to try and approach him. That would be weird, wouldn’t it? Alec would make it weird even if it wasn’t, no doubt. There are probably non-weird ways to approach a guy in a situation like this, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t know any of them, pretty sure he’d just make it incurably awkward, somehow.

He orders a beer, very carefully keeping eye contact with the bartender and then looking down at his phone, refusing to let his eyes wander over to Magnus. He can’t just sit here and stare, not unless he’s going to go over there and try to start a conversation, and that is definitely not something that he — 

“Oh! Alec?”

Alec freezes, his shoulders creeping up practically to his ears with tension. But then he turns, exhaling sharply in an attempt to convince himself that this is all going to be fine, and sure enough, there’s Magnus, standing just to his right.

“Magnus, hey,” he says. “I — wow. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Not quite a lie; he’d come over to the bar knowing Magnus was in the room, sure, but he hadn’t exactly expected to run into him tonight at Taki’s in general. On the other hand, it’s also kind of inane and obvious thing to say — of _course_ he hadn’t expected to see Magnus here, or basically anywhere, ever again; the guy came into the shop _once_ , for God’s sake — so he’s not really sure why he even bothered.

Magnus doesn’t seem to think he’s too much of an idiot, though, or at least if he does he doesn’t let it show on his face. “I’ve never been here before,” he offers, and Alec nods along. “I was just meeting some friends.”

“I, uh — my siblings and me, we’ve been coming here forever,” he says. “We love this place.”

That gets him a smile that sort of straddles the border between polite and genuinely warm, and they lapse into silence for a second. Magnus has carried his drink over, and as he slides properly onto the seat next to Alec, they both stare down into their glasses, the bar bustling around them, until after a moment Magnus clears his throat.

“The book you recommended was wonderful,” he says, and Alec flushes a little, both at the praise and the reminder of the fact that Magnus had asked, specifically, for books about rut. Rutting. Being in rut. “Honestly, I can’t thank you enough.”

Huh. That seems like kind of a… strong reaction. Sure, knowing about your own body and your designation and your health and everything is important, but it’s not like Magnus is some scared, confused teenager. Surely Alec can’t have helped him out _that_ much. He blinks a little, but smiles, too, and says, “Uh, it’s nothing. Glad it was — helpful?”

“Very helpful,” Magnus agrees, and Alec tries not to read that as an innuendo, he really does, but he’s kind of got rut on the brain now. 

Magnus kind of seems like he wants to say something else, though, so Alec waits a second, but nothing else is forthcoming; Magnus just bites his lip, looks a little conflicted, and gives Alec this sidelong glance that he has no chance of interpreting. It’s not like Alec has anything _he_ particularly wants to say, though, so he just takes a sip of his beer and waits — and, finally, when Magnus lets out this little frustrated noise, like a sigh that gets all tangled up in his throat on the way out, he looks over to find him looking a little frustrated. He’s moving to take another drink when Magnus finally speaks.

“This is my first rut,” Magnus blurts, and Alec freezes suddenly and absolutely in place with his glass halfway to his lips. “That’s why I needed information, books, you know. That’s why I — God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he interrupts himself, his hands fluttering around just over the tabletop in a way that’s as graceful as it is anxious as it is eminently distracting.

“It’s probably partly because you’re so close to rutting,” Alec hears himself say, though all he’s really capable of _thinking_ at the moment is a humming buzz that’s reminiscent of TV static. “Are you — sorry, you’re sure it’s your _first_ rut?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” Magnus replies, arching a brow; it seems to draw him out of his own weird headspace a little, at least, to have something to shoot back at Alec over, so that’s something. “I think I’d have noticed if I rutted before. I’m told it’s pretty hard to miss.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s — you’ve got to be, what, twenty-five at least?” Alec says, still completely without a filter or really much mental input at all, too taken aback to even care what’s coming out of his mouth beyond the vague impression that he’s probably being a little rude.

“Twenty-eight and flattered,” Magnus says dryly. “I presented in my late teens, but I never actually went into a presenting rut. I just — started smelling like an alpha.”

“So you’re just… what, a late bloomer?”

“ _Very_ late, evidently, yes.”

“And you…” Alec hesitates, suddenly realizing that he probably doesn’t have any right to be asking these sorts of questions. Then again, Magnus has been _answering_ them, and without Alec really pressuring him to do so, and he’d been the one to start volunteering information in the first place, so… maybe it’s fine? Regardless, he can’t stem the tide of his own curiosity, though talking about casually ruts in even this much detail with a man who’s very nearly the personification of every single thing he’s ever found attractive in a guy is starting to bring more than a little heat to his cheeks. “You just… You’re just having to deal with it now?”

“What other choice do I have?” Magnus pauses for a deep draught of whatever it is that he’s drinking; it’s colorful and a bit intimidating, given that it smells very strongly of alcohol and not much of anything else and yet is _still_ an almost neon pink. “I can’t just ignore it and hope it goes away. I knew it would be coming eventually. Or I hoped, anyway. I’d have been very concerned if it didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Alec says, completely at a loss for anything else. “I mean… yeah. Wow.”

Magnus snorts. “Ah, just what every man wants to hear about his hormonal history. ‘Yeah. Wow.’”

“Sorry,” Alec mutters, flushing and looking away. “Wow, that was — I really shouldn’t have—”

“It’s all right,” Magnus cuts him off, waving a hand dismissively. “I brought it up. And you were very helpful, before. And you haven’t been — dismissive, or rude. Good lord, I’ve had more than one person tell me it must be because of some moral failing on my part, or becuase I just wasn’t alpha enough, or what have you. A little bit of curiosity is hardly the worst thing to ever happen to me, Alec, I assure you.”

“Still,” Alec says. “I wouldn’t want some guy I barely knew asking me questions like that. So. Sorry.”

Magnus sighs a little bit, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “Your apology is mostly unnecessary, but accepted nonetheless.”

There’s a bit of a lull in their conversation, both of them turning back to their drinks for a moment. Alec is just about to start making his excuses about meeting back up with his siblings and saying how nice it’s been to run into Magnus again, but he really has to go, when Magnus sighs explosively and folds his elbows onto the bar, leaning down onto him until his forehead is almost touching the bartop. 

“Can I say something else, since I’ve already given you TMI levels of detail about all this?” he says, shooting Alec a sidelong look from where he’s half-buried in his own arms. “And since you seem curious anyway?”

Alec blinks, mouth hanging open a little. “...Sure?”

Magnus sighs again, letting his forehead slip onto the bartop with a low _thunk_ before he straightens up a bit, rubbing a hand over his chin. He gives Alec another look, long and considering and unreadable, and Alec’s so distracted trying to puzzle out exactly what that look means that he somehow, inconceivably, almost misses it when Magnus says, “I want to spend this rut with someone, but there’s no one in particular I want to spend it with, you know? I just don’t want to be alone. I’m terrified of what it’s going to be like if I try to do it alone.”

For the entire duration of the (admittedly short) time he’s known Magnus, a low-grade attraction has been running in the back of Alec’s mind. Well, okay, a little more than low-grade, and especially potent with Magnus sitting here right next to him, where Alec can smell his impossible spicy, smokey, sweet scent mixing in with the drinks they’re both working on and somehow completely overpowering the otherwise almost oppressive presence of strangers’ scents coming at him from all sides, and where it’s all too easy to see the way the low lighting of the bar catches on the highlights in his hair and the flecks of glitter on his eyelids and the pile of necklaces he’s wearing and the rings on all his fingers. Both of the times they’ve met, both of the conversations they’ve had, they’ve talked about ruts, because Magnus is an alpha, and he’s maybe the most beautiful alpha Alec has ever seen, and he’s going into rut soon, and all of these things are things Alec has known more or less from the moment Magnus walked in his door.

And yet now, this moment, is the first moment that he’s felt well and truly swept off his feet by the barrage of images that are now coursing through his mind, of Magnus in rut, sweating and gorgeous and all but out of his mind with need. He can see it so _vividly_ , and the problem — the real problem — is that now he’s not just seeing Magnus. He’s seeing someone else there, too, some other body, and he’s hoping to hell and back that maybe that person could be him.

Of course, on the list of totally inappropriate things to ask a guy you barely know… Well, as far as Alec’s concerned, it’s high. Casual sex is one thing. Casual ruts, though? Maybe it’s just… internalized stigma, or whatever. Maybe he’s not being sex-positive enough, or whatever it is that Izzy would have to say if she were party to the thoughts chasing each other off cliffs in Alec’s mind right now. But something about that concept just sounds so… callous to him. Impersonal. Rutting is a deeply vulnerable and personal experience; he could never just… he could never just ask something like that.

But, he realizes with a sudden flash of abject embarrassment bordering on horror, he’d better say _something_ , becuase he’s been sitting here with his mouth gaping open like a fish for way, way, _way_ too long. God, forget sharing his rut or having sex or even seeing each other ever again or anything else; he feels like he’ll be pretty lucky at this point if Magnus doesn’t get a restraining order put on him.

“Why,” he manages, then uses taking a sip of his drink as an excuse to pause for a moment in a desperate attempt to regroup his thoughts. “Why, uh… If it matters that much to you, why not go to a… I mean, there’s…”

“Why not go to a professional?” Magnus asks, maybe taking pity on him. His nose wrinkles a little as he says it. “I certainly thought about it. And, of course, I have nothing against the idea generally, and I don’t intend to be dismissive, but I found the thought just…” He pauses, sighs, shrugs a little. “I don’t want to spend my first ever rut with a stranger. Or even a mostly-stranger. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll ever want to spend _any_ rut with a stranger — the thought does _not_ appeal — but certainly not this one. This _first_ one.”

Well. Alec certainly can’t help him with that, and it’s embarrassing that he’s even let his thoughts run away from him this much, but he has to admit that Magnus’ words hit him like a wave of ice water. He’s — well, maybe he’s not _quite_ as much of a stranger as a prostitute would be, but he’s pretty damn close. And, he reminds himself, he doesn’t even have any real idea of whether or not Magnus is into men, or alphas, or especially men who _are_ alphas. Sure, he’d made that one little comment the other day that implied that he wasn’t into omegas — or at least not _just_ omegas — but that doesn’t mean hardly anything. That was in no way intended to be a come-on, or even the barest hint of an invitation; Magnus is just spilling his guts to a mostly-stranger in a bar because he’s stressed and emotional and about to rut. Alec needs to get a _fucking_ grip.

“Well,” he says at length, before the silence can drag on long enough for things to get any weirder than they already are. “I can definitely understand that. I’m, uh — I’m sorry.”

Magnus quirks a wry little grin at him, shrugging his shoulders expressively. “Oh, I’ll be more than fine, I’m sure. Most alphas don’t have a partner with them for their first ruts, after all.”

That’s certainly true, as Alec knows first-hand. Granted, the reason for that is that usually, first ruts occur around puberty, and most people either aren’t having sex yet at all by that point or, certainly, not in committed-enough relationships to bring the concept of sharing a rut out of the realm of cultural stigma. There’s also the fact that presenting ruts aren’t… well, they aren’t usually nearly as pleasant as later ruts, but Alec doesn’t think telling Magnus that is exactly helpful. Besides, his isn’t going to be a _presenting_ rut anyway, just a _first_ rut, so maybe it’s different.

But then he looks at Magnus again, and thinks — again — about what he might look like at the height of his rut, with his hair mussed up and a flush on top of his gorgeous golden-brown skin, and has to bite his lip against saying something stupid.

Biting his lip doesn’t work, as it turns out, because Magnus tilts his head just slightly and reaches up to tweak at an earring with one hand, and suddenly Alec can’t hold anything in, and there are words tumbling half-formed out of his mouth even as his higher brain function looks on in horror.

“Uh, well, I mean, a — a guy like you, you know, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding anyone,” he blurts, and Magnus startles a little, blinking at him in a way that unfortunately fails to stem the flow of nonsense coming out of Alec’s mouth. “You know, for the — in the future, even if you, you know, if this time it’s going to be too soon.”

Magnus keeps blinking even after Alec’s word vomit thankfully comes to an end, but there’s something thoughtful in his expression that does help mollify Alec a little. He doesn’t, at the very least, look completely disgusted, or like he’s about to stand up an leave just to get away from Alec or this conversation or whatever. And that’s… Well. Alec glances briefly back across the room at his family, then looks down at his half-finished drink and ruefully thinks he doesn’t even really have the excuse of alcohol to excuse the probably pretty dumb thing he’s about to do.

“Look,” he says, and Magnus does, in fact, turn to look at him, blinking a bit at the way Alec’s broken the little silence that had welled up between them. _Oh, God,_ Alec thinks, _what am I doing?_ But the words tumble out anyway. “If you — if you wanted — could I — not for this rut,” he puts in hastily, not wanting to seem like he’s pushing for something that might be off-putting, “but could we, could we — would you want to maybe get dinner, sometime?”

Alec lets his jaw snap shut at the end of it, torn between a sense of horror and being relieved that at least he’d managed to get something out, rather than just doing what he’s been known to do in the past and letting a potential opportunity with a beautiful guy pass by him because he couldn’t muster up the courage or drive or whatever to actually say something. 

He almost-but-not-quite meets Magnus’ eyes, and finds, to his relief, that Magnus looks — well, he actually looks kind of _flattered_. He looks… _excited_. Alec feels his heart thump heavily in his chest.

“I would love that,” Magnus says, his voice just a little softer than it has been. “I didn’t realize you were — well. Now I’m wishing I’d asked you out the other day after all.”

“After all?” Alec asks, well aware that his mouth’s hanging open a little bit. Magnus smirks at him, but it’s not an unkind expression, just playful, and he flushes a little and looks away.

“I wanted to ask for your number in the bookstore, but — well, I talked myself out of it for a few reasons,” Magnus explains. “You were at work, for one thing, and that seemed rude.”

Alec’s lungs feel like they are about to burst. His heart feels like it’s about to crack through his ribcage. “I’m not at work now,” he points out. He hopes that, somehow, Izzy can’t hear this conversation, but knows to be proud of him anyway for being halfway smooth.

Magnus’ little smirk melts into a smile that seems to smolder like low-burning embers. “I had noticed that, yes,” he says, and leans in just a little bit closer. 

“Anything you want to ask, then?” Alec says, unable to keep his eyes from dipping just a little bit to Magnus’ lips, and equally unable to keep himself from daking in a deep, slow breath. Not scenting him, not quite, but close, especially with how close they are to one another now.

“Well, if you’re taking me out to dinner, then I guess I’d better have your number so I can ask you for the details,” Magnus says. His voice is smooth, and dropping in timbre with every word he says, and Alec can’t help but shiver. Suddenly _he_ almost feels like the one teetering on the edge of rut; the way Magnus is making him feel right now isn’t really so different. There’s that same tight, wanting feeling under his skin, almost an itch, and the same hyper-awareness of even the slightest of sensations. When Magnus’ sleeve brushes against his arm, Alec has to hold back another, stronger shiver.

“I guess I’d better give it to you, then,” Alec manages, and Magnus’ smile bursts open with a flash of white teeth, his eyes glittering like fireworks.

—

They let him walk his way back across the room in peace, but quite literally the _instant_ Alec sits back down at the table, they’re on him like a pack of wolves.

“Okay,” Isabelle says. “Did that just happen?”

“What about the guy from the store?” Jace asks, though he mostly just looks like he’s trying to stir up as much shit as possible.

“What’s his name?” Clary asks, by far the most reasonable question; Alec shoots her a grateful little look and wonders why she was ever his least favorite. Then she ruins it by adding, “He’s _really_ hot. Maybe the hottest guy I’ve ever seen you talk to. Like… ever.”

“His name is Magnus,” he says, choosing to ignore the rest of Clary’s statement, “and he _is_ theguy from the store. He — uh. He came in looking for a book the other day, and then he came over to me at the bar, and…” He’s not sure what else to add, where else to take his sentence that doesn’t involve mentioning the word _rut_ in any way, shape, or form. “He… gave me his number?”

Jace wolf-whistles, grinning like an idiot and wriggling his eyebrows across the table in Alec’s general direction; Izzy and Clary express a _bit_ more decorum, but not much. Max, bless him, is the only one who reacts in an even halfway mature way, despite also being the only one at the table who isn’t an adult — and, for that matter, despite being a teenage boy deep in the throes of puberty.

“Are you going to go out with him?” he asks, a perfectly practical question, and Alec gratefully jumps on the chance to talk about anything other than how hot Magnus is. Which, he _is_ , obviously he is, but a) Alec doesn’t exactly enjoy talking about this kind of thing with Jace and Izzy when they’re on their _best_ behavior, which they certainly are not at the moment and b) if he talks — or even thinks — about how hot Magnus is anymore right now, when he’s right across the room and close enough to rut that it’s impossible to miss and equally impossible not to think about, he is going to lose his mind.

“I think so,” he tells Max. “I mean — yeah. We talked about going on a date.” He very carefully doesn’t mention that this date will have to wait until after Magnus’ rut is over.

Max seems to consider this, then nods, quirking a grin. “Awesome.”

“Yeah, it is pretty awesome,” Alec agrees, smiling across the table at his brother, and only rolling his eyes a little when Jace, Izzy, anc Clary join in with echoing “Awesome”s and yet more statements that border on inappropriate. He should really cut them some slack, he figures; his siblings are happy for him, and, Alec thinks as he casts one more look across the room to where Magnus is still sitting at the bar, he’s happy, too.

—

Magnus walking into his the store again bright and early Monday morning isn’t exactly the _last_ thing Alec would have expected to happen — in part because he’s fully clothed and not actively rutting when he does it — but it comes pretty damn close. 

“Oh my God,” Alec blurts before Magnus is even all the way in the door, because his scent is unmistakable at this point and also becuase he is _so incredibly close_ to the beginning of his rut; Alec honestly can’t believe he was able to make it here without someone stopping him on the street and telling him to go home. Or maybe people have, and he just ignored them; either way, Alec is staring at him with his mouth hanging open, trying desperately not to pant in the incredibly heady waves of scent.

“Hello, Alec,” Magnus says, in a dry sort of tone that says to Alec that maybe people _have_ been bothering him in the street, or that at least maybe he’s aware that he probably shouldn’t be out of his house right now. “Good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, too,” Alec says, mostly on autopilot, his mouth still hanging open. He blinks rapidly, his jaw working for a moment without any sound coming out, and then he finally manages to choke out. “How, uh, why are — can I — is there anything I can help you with?”

He doesn’t mean Magnus’ rut — he does _not_ mean Magnus’ rut, he tells himself very firmly — but he can’t deny that the thought flits through his mind. Magnus gives him a teasing little smile, which is ridiculous, because he’s not a mind reader, surely he shouldn’t be able to tell what thoughts are running through Alec’s head. Though Alec will grant that maybe the blush he can feel all the way up to the tips of his ears is making matters a little more obvious.

“Well,” Magnus says, coming to stand just in front of where Alec is doing some bookkeeping behind the register. “May I be blunt?”

Alec considers the last time Magnus was blunt with him, and tries to make his peace with the fact that he may be about to die. He nods anyway, though.

“I need more specific book advice,” Magnus begins, and Alec starts to let out a breath of relief — that, at least, he can help with, thank God — before Magnus continues with, “In particular, this time, I need anything you’ve got about handling a rut by yourself,” and Alec chokes on his next breath in.

“Uh,” he says, fidgeting with a spare pen in the pen cup by the register. “Um. Yeah. Yes. Hang on.” 

“Thank you,” Magnus replies, watching and waiting patiently as Alec makes his way out from behind the counter, and thankfully not commenting on the way he almost trips over himself doing so, because his mind is almost entirely overcome by the combination of Magnus’ scent and the glimpse of collarbone visible from under the neckline of the silky-looking gray shirt he’s wearing and the words _handling a rut by yourself._

Alec leads the way back over to his little alpha help section rather than trying to say anything else, feeling a certain level of deja vu as he thumbs over the spines with Magnus standing at his shoulder. This time, though, the stakes feel higher; this time, Magnus isn’t a stranger, not really, and Alec understands his situation a little better, and, well. He wants — at least some part of him wants — to turn around and say, _You don’t need a book, Magnus, you don’t need anything. Let me help you; I’ve shared ruts before. You’re beautiful, and I want to help._

Of course, even if he _did_ say something, he probably wouldn’t be able to actually put it as eloquently as that, and saying anything at all is a _terrible_ idea. Still, the thought is more than tempting.

He shakes his head at himself minutely and reaches for a book. “Okay,” he says, his voice sounding a little strangled; he clears his throat and before repeating, “Okay. This one should — well, I don’t sell a lot of, uh. Anything with… let’s say _excessive_ detail about ruts or heats or anything, but this should help, I hope.” He hands the book over and watches as Magnus flips it and reads the back cover and then flips it over again to page through it, his brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“This looks wonderful,” he says, his voice a little absent as he focuses on the book in front of him. It’s only when he looks up, a tiny smirk curling his lips, meeting Alec’s gaze through the fringe of his eyelashes, that Alec feels a shiver of something between danger and anticipation make its way up his spine. “I certainly understand now wanting to sell anything with _excessive detail_.” He says it in a tone that’s almost lascivious, and certainly makes Alec feel even hotter in his core than he already did.

He has no idea how to respond to that, so he settles for just giving Magnus a smile that’s probably shaky enough to make it more than obvious where his thoughts are.

“Right,” Magnus says after a moment of sustained eye contact and silence that makes Alec’s heartbeat significantly quicker than it had been, and it had _already_ been rabbiting away behind his ribs fast enough to make him feel a little faint. “Well, I suppose I’ll just get this then, and get out of your hair.”

“You’re not — um,” Alec says, almost swallowing his tongue as he tries to figure out what to say that isn’t _please just stay here, maybe we could get you set up in the back room, or maybe I could go home with you, I can close for the day, it’s fine._ “It’s — I definitely don’t mind. It’s always good to… see you.”

_Always_ , he says, as though it’s been more than three times that they’ve met. Still, it gets him a smile — a genuine, easy smile, not a smirk or a flirtatious little grin this time, just a nice soft smile that makes Alec think less about Magnus’ rut and more about the fact that Magnus had — Magnus had said they could go out, and Magnus had given him his number, and Magnus had felt like he could trust him enough only the second time they met to basically spill his guts. Magnus, Alec realizes, _likes_ him; he has to, impossible as that may seem. He must, because he’s here, isn’t he? He’s, technically, the one who’s sought Alec out, both at the bar and by coming here today. Magnus must like him a lot, and honestly — honestly, Alec’s not quite sure what to do with that, not with rut-scent so thick in the air, but at the very least he knows that he’s really, really looking forward to going out on a date.

_After_ Magnus’ rut, that is.

They make their way over to the register without anyone else making any awkward half-declarations or flirtatious remarks, and Alec rings the book up and Magnus hands over his credit card all without breaking the silence. It’s only once the book is in a bag and the bag is in Magnus’ hands and Magnus is about to turn to leave that he hesitates and then says, very slowly, “Alec?”

Alec’s tongue flicks out subconsciously to wet his lips. “Yeah?”

“Would you…” He trails off, his expression clouded, but he’s meeting Alec’s eyes steadily when he says, “Could I ask you to help me with this rut?”

It takes a second for the question to really sink in, even though Alec realizes as he hears it that somehow, on some level, he’d been expecting it. He takes a deep, slightly shaky breath, and doesn’t let himself drop his gaze from Magnus’ face. He doesn’t say anything, though; there are thoughts racing through his head, but they’re all more or less useless to him, flashes and impressions of what it might be like if he said _yes_ , of how it might feel, of how Magnus might look and sound and taste. They’re vivid and distracting, but none of them really translate into words, and certainly not _useful_ words.

“It’s just,” Magnus says, when Alec doesn’t do anything to immediately answer his question, “I know I said I didn’t want to spend my rut with a stranger, but you — you aren’t a stranger anymore, Alec, not really. And I don’t want to do it alone if I don’t have to.”

God, if there were anything Magnus could have said to make telling him _yes_ any more tempting, that was it. Alec doesn’t want him to be alone, either; he’s rutted both alone and with a partner and he knows exactly how much better it is when there’s someone else there to take care of you, to help you stay contained in your own skin. He wants to be that for Magnus — more even than he wants to sleep with him, he realizes, he wants to care for him in that way, support him, prove that he can do it and that Magnus should stay with him becuase he would make a good mate.

And, _whoa_ , the word _mate_ brings Alec’s train of thought to a screeching halt, because what is he doing, thinking that far ahead, throwing around words that serious even in the privacy of his own skull? He blinks, then refocuses his attention on the Magnus in front of him, not the hypothetical one in his brain — the Magnus who’s teetering on the edge of rut, who’s never _had_ a rut before, who’s scared and maybe a little lonely, who Alec still barely knows and yet who feels familiar, and who he _wants_ to know.

“I can’t,” he says, finally forcing words out through stiff lips. Magnus’ face seems almost to shutter, his eyes going distant, and Alec feels his heart thump in his chest with the fear that he might just have ruined something in trying to save it. He hurries to add, “I — Magnus, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I _want_ to, believe me, but I — you’re so close to the beginning of your rut now, and I know exactly what that’s like, how strong it is.”

Magnus hesitates a moment, licking his bottom lip and narrowing his eyes, but his voice is thoughtful and a little cowed when he says, “You mean in terms of consent?”

“Yeah,” Alec nearly croaks. His throat feels incredibly dry, and drier the longer Magnus stands there looking like Alec’s hurting him and giving him hope at the same time. “I mean, if you’d asked me a week ago, or even on Friday…”

He trails off, hoping that his reasoning is fully understandable now. There’s just no way he can agree to something as serious as sharing a rut, especially when Magnus had previously seemed like he only wanted to do so with someone he knew well, not when, while he may have agreed to a date, they haven’t actually gone out yet, and especially not when Alec knows _exactly_ what the pre-rut rush of hormones is like, how strong it is. He wants to — _God,_ he wants to. But he can’t.

“Well,” Magnus says eventually, and, thankfully, he _does_ sound a lot less upset. “I’m pretty sure that when my rut is over, I’ll be really grateful for that. Hell, I’m grateful _now_. It’s just that part of me also wishes you’d said yes.” His mouth twists into a wry grin, and he reaches out to brush the backs of his knuckles against Alec’s cheek. “You’re a good man, Alec.”

“Pretty sure a good man wouldn’t have been so tempted to say yes,” Alec admits.

“Oh, don’t tell me that,” Magnus scolds him, before shaking himself a little and stepping back minutely, putting just enough extra space between them to make it easy to breathe again. “All right, then. I’d better be getting home.”

“Yes, you should,” Alec agrees immediately, frowning a little. “I’m honestly shocked you left your house today at all. It’s not a good idea to be out so close to the beginning of your rut. Get some rest.”

“Yes, dear,” Magnus agrees, tone teasing and just a little flirtatious, and the odd, warm quivering sensation in Alec’s gut is twofold: for the pet name, and for the fact that it seems like a return to form.

“I’ll see you later,” Alec says as Magnus finally turns to go, and Magnus waits until he’s all the way across the store, holding the door open and just about to step outside, before he turns around and smiles.

“I’ll see you,” he agrees, and then he’s gone.

—

Alec’s palms are already sweating by the time he rings the doorbell.

The previous week had been torture — more so than he was even expecting, and he’d known all along that it would probably be pretty bad. He texted Magnus three separate times, even though he knew that checking his phone probably wasn’t going to be his first priority while he was in the middle of his first ever rut, and also left one very dubious voicemail which may or may not have been influenced by the three drinks he’d had that night after work. 

“I can’t help it,” he’d said morosely to Isabelle as she’d laughed herself silly on his couch after he hung up, thoroughly entertained by the two minutes Alec had spent rambling to Magnus’ answering machine. “I literally haven’t thought about anything but him all week. He asked me to share his _rut_ , Iz, and I said _no_.”

“Saying no was the right choice, though,” she’d responded once she’d recovered from her laughing fit.

Alec had sighed. “I know,” he’d said, but it wasn’t really doing anything to make him feel better at that point.

Magnus had texted him back, though. Not after the first text, and not after the second, and he definitely hadn’t responded in any way to the voicemail — Alec fervently hopes that either he missed it somehow or deleted it without listening to it — but after the third text, which Alec had sent just this morning, knowing that Magnus’ rut would probably be drawing to a close sometime soon and wanting to know how he was doing, Magnus had sent him an address. And so Alec stands at the front door of a loft in a charming neighborhood in Brooklyn, really pretty close to his bookstore, which maybe shouldn’t come as a surprise, clutching a grocery bag full of decidedly unhealthy comfort foods and not sure what he’s expecting to find on the other side of the threshold.

It takes a minute for Magnus to come to the door; Alec hears a distant shout of “Just a moment!”, and then he stands more or less patiently for quite a few moment before the door finally swings open to reveal Magnus in all his post-rut glory.

He’s looking a little thin, which is typical — ruts mean burning a _lot_ of calories over the course of a week or so, and, especially when you’re having your first few ruts, it can be hard to plan for just how much food you’re going to need to eat, as the experience of Alec’s teen years fully evidences — and he’s also looking a lot tired, but when he sees Alec, his face lights up. Alec, meanwhile, is just trying not to keel over from the combined effect of Magnus’ rumpled hair, skin-tight leggings, and the _smell_ of him, which is still tinged through with rut-scent and also the obvious and unmistakable smell of sex. Sex with himself, Alec’s assuming, given that he can’t smell anyone else and also given everything that Magnus had said to him about sharing his rut before it was actually upon him, but sex all the same. It’s damn near overpowering.

“Hi,” Alec says, after they’ve stood there staring at each other for a moment, both of them open-mouthed and just standing there in silence, drinking one another in. “Uh — I wanted to check on you.” He holds out the bag of food. “I brought snacks. Figured you could probably use the calories right about now.”

“God, yes,” Magnus groans appreciatively, a sound which is doing nothing to take Alec’s mind off the fact that he’s just spent the past week or so getting off repeatedly. “I’ve spent _so_ much on takeout in the last week, you would not believe. Please come in.”

“I’m honestly just surprised that you could _get_ takeout,” Alec comments as Magnus steps inside to let him through, shuts the door behind them, and then turns to lead him farther into the apartment. The whole place is very stylish, which he had pretty much expected, bordering on that industrial style he knows is popular but combined with bold colors and little pops of luxe comfort. “People usually don’t want to deliver to customers in a rut or a heat.”

“I had a beta friend of mine pick it up,” Magnus explains. “We’ve known each other for so long we’re basically related, so there wasn’t any risk of me trying to get her to come inside and… well. Anyway, the point is, she left the food just inside the door and I came and got it when I could. But even then…” He trails off, shaking his head as he leads Alec into a well-appointed living room. “I knew I would be hungry, but I didn’t know _how_ hungry.” 

“Believe me, I know what you mean,” Alec says, grinning a little. Talking about it in completely nonsexual terms like this is helping a little; as long as he doesn’t think about _why_ Magnus was so hungry, or what he may have been hungry for besides food, he’ll be fine, even though the whole apartment is permeated with not just Magnus’ own intoxicating scent, but also the unmistakable aroma of an alpha in rut.

He holds the grocery bag out for Magnus to take before he sits down on the loveseat, and Magnus digs through it eagerly before looking up at Alec with a soft but unreadable expression on his face.

“You really are incredible,” he says, and Alec distinctly feels his heart start to thump faster in his chest. “I’m very, very glad we stumbled into each other.”

“Me, too,” Alec replies softly, and there’s a moment of silence where Magnus smiles at him a little tentatively and Alec smiles tentatively back. Then Magnus clears his throat and sets the bag of food down on the coffee table, moving to sit on the opposite end of the loveseat from Alec, close enough that Alec wants to lean in towards him but far enough away that doing so would be a little weird.

“Thank you for the food,” Magnus says, and Alec’s about to say _it’s nothing_ when he continues with, “And… thank you for telling me no, the other day. I shouldn’t have even asked, not when I was so close to my rut — I regret putting you in that position. I’ve never felt anything like that before, the… the _drive_. I wasn’t prepared for it.”

“No one ever is,” Alec responds, his voice coming out a little quieter than intended, but thankfully steady. “And you don’t have to thank me. It — I really did think about saying yes. It was a close thing.”

“But no matter what you thought about, you _did_ say no,” Magnus insists. “And I’m glad, because it means that when I tell you, now, when I’m _not_ about to go into rut, that I would still want to share my next one with you, hopefully you’ll know that I mean it.”

Alec feels all the breath leave his body at once, and has to gasp for air to replace it. This was — this was _not_ why he came here today, not at all, but all at once his body is thrumming with it. Magnus holds his gaze steadily, his eyes clear and burning hot, just a little bit, just enough that Alec doesn’t even need to smell the slight shift in his scent to tell that he’s aroused just thinking about it. And, God, Alec is too, so much that he has to squeeze his eyes shut tight for a moment to get back in control, his heart pounding in his breast.

“Let me take you out on that date first,” he says, finally, and Magnus’ answering smile is blinding, even before he adds, “and then ask me again — or maybe I’ll ask you.”

“I would be honored,” Magnus tells him, scooting just a little bit closer. Alec doesn’t miss the way his pupils are blown wide, or the way his lips part slightly. He must still be on the tail end of his rut, just a little; not enough to cloud his judgement or impact his decision-making, but enough that arousal is still closer to the surface than normal, enough that he can still _feel_ it.

“I have a rut coming up in a couple of months,” Alec says, leaning in and smiling at the way Magnus’ breath catches as he gets closer and closer. He’s babbling a little, but neither of them is really paying attention to what he’s saying anymore anyway. “I guess we don’t know when your next one will be; they won’t be regular for a while. So you might still beat me, but you never know.”

“You’re gorgeous,” Magnus murmurs. Their faces are now mere inches apart. There’s just a beat of silence, a spare moment where they breathe together and nothing else, and then Magnus says, “I want to kiss you.”

Alec doesn’t say anything; he just nods ever-so-slightly and lets his eyes slip closed, and he hears Magnus huff out a quiet laugh, feels the puff of air it sends against his lips, and then he’s not thinking about much of anything at all anymore, because Magnus is kissing him and it feels like nothing he’s ever known before, like too much and not enough all at once.

He’s pretty sure the deep groan that vibrates through his chest is his, but it’s hard to say; Magnus presses him back against the side of the couch, twisting their bodies until they slot together neatly, and doesn’t stop kissing him for even a second, his mouth hot and slick and firm against Alec’s, his hands moving to knit themselves into the hair at the nape of Alec’s neck. Alec winds up with a thigh pressed between Magnus’ legs, half-turned so that his other leg is still dangling off the couch, and by the time he has to pull back to desperately gasp for air, there’s no mistaking the fact that Magnus is hard.

“God,” Alec groans, leaning in to bite at Magnus’ lips. “We — is this —”

“I don’t want to rush you,” Magnus breathes, in between kissing him again and leaning down to nip lightly at the hinge of his jaw; this time Alec’s certain that the groan that fills the room is his own, and he can’t help the way his hips twitch upward just slightly. “But, Alec — Alec —”

“I want —” Alec says, then loses his breath when Magnus sucks a kiss into the column of his neck and swears violently on a gasp. He takes a moment to collect himself when Magnus pulls back to mouth at his jaw some more and tries again, his words strained. “Magnus, I _want_ —”

His words have an observable impact on Magnus, though it’s maybe not the one he was hoping for. Magnus pulls back a little, frowning slightly even though his eyes are all pupil and his lips are red and swollen and kiss-bruised. He hesitates a second, then manages to grind out, “I’m still so close to rut, maybe we should — I don’t want our first time to be —” 

He can’t seem to find the words, so he just gestures, looking slightly frustrated, seeming to encompas the way they’re spread out on the couch, halfway to hanging off of it, and the way they’ve gone from zero to sixty in no time at all, the way he is what feels like _achingly_ hard against Alec’s thigh after just a few kisses.

Alec slowly nods, wriggling a little to sit up slightly against the arm of the couch and put a little space between them. He considers, trying very determinedly to think through the haze of _want_ in his mind, the way Magnus’ scent is slowly driving him insane and the nice, proper date Alec wants to take him on, to really, actually get to know him and spend some time together eating good food and drinking good wine, and _then_ come home and rut against him on the couch until they both come in their pants, if that’s what they decide they want to do. He’s not sure how to communicate all of that, but it must show on his face regardless, because Magnus pulls back slightly, nodding, looking just a touch regretful, but certainly not upset.

Maybe it’s sending mixed signals, but Alec can’t quiet resist grabbing him by the back of his head to pull him in for another kiss, long and filthy and full of promise; he cannot _wait_ to get Magnus spread out above him properly, or under him, or next to him, he’s not picky. There are probably better times and places than this, though — times when Magnus doesn’t look like he hasn’t eaten in a week, for example, and times when they’re not so surrounded by rut-scent that they can barely think straight.

“I don’t want you to think this is even close to what I meant when I asked you on a date,” Alec says, gasping, when he finally pulls back, “but if you don’t mind me using your kitchen, I can go heat up some of that food for you, and then we could — I don’t know — we could hang out?”

Magnus lets out a deep, satisfied sigh, looking down at him with glittering eyes and a soft smile that’s only a little bit at odds with the way he’s clearly still hard in his pants. 

“It’s like you read my mind,” he says, and Alec smiles back at him, powerless to resist the force of his contentment. 

Magnus stands and leads him to the kitchen, and Alec’s more or less listening as he suggests a show he’s been meaning to watch on Netflix as something they could watch while he eats and starts describing it — “don’t worry, it’s about home organization, I doubt there will be anything that will get us thinking about jumping each other again” — and he nods and interjects the occaisional question or inane comment in all the right places, but mostly, he’s marvelling at how lucky he feels. Magnus was right earlier — they really did just stumble into each other, and now he’s standing in Magnus’ kitchen, clothes rumpled from some of the hottest and most frenzied kisses he’s ever experienced, trying to figure out how to operate Magnus’ space-age microwave, and Alec is so happy and awed and eager that he feels like he might burst.

Magnus turns to go back into the living room and set up the TV while Alec finishes getting food ready, but before he can go, Alec snags him by the arm and pulls him in again. This time, the kiss Alec presses to his mouth is soft and sweet and gentle, barely a hint of pressure at all — Magnus leans into it, but even so it stays understated, and when they pull apart this time, Magnus sighs a little.

“Hey,” Alec says quietly, and Magnus looks up to meet his eyes. “You said — earlier, you said you were glad you found me. I just wanted to say I’m glad, too.”

When Magnus smiles at him, he feels a little wobble of weakness in his knees; when Magnus presses their foreheads together, scenting him with a deep, obvious, unmistakable breath in, he feels it like summer sunlight, warming him to his core.

“Can I tell you something?” Magnus asks him softly, and Alec’s already nodding even though Magnus is still talking. “It might be a little forward.”

“I don’t mind forward,” Alec replies, thinking back to the way they had just been kissing on Magnus’ couch, to the way Magnus asked him to share his rut only the third time they met.

Magnus leans in again and scents him even more obviously, trailing his nose up the column of Alec’s throat to just behind his ear; Alec has to bite back a whine. 

“When I first came into your shop,” he begins, his mouth so close that his lips brush Alec’s skin as he speaks, “your scent almost knocked me flat. I’ve been in my fair share of relationships, I’ve been in love with people of all genders and all dynamics, and none of them have ever smelled as good to me as you. I can’t even begin to explain it, but...”

“Me too,” Alec blurts, cutting him off. “I mean — God, Magnus, you walked in and it was like nothing else mattered.”

They’re dancing very, very close to implying things Alec’s not sure either of them are really ready to imply — the only person that’s supposed to smell _that_ good to you is your mate. And most people only ever have _one_ mate. And they haven’t even gone on a date yet.

And yet Alec looks at Magnus and can practically picture what his claiming mark would look like on that neck.

The microwave dings suddenly, and they almost jump away from each other. Alec stares at Magnus, startled, blinking, but Magnus just laughs a little, breaking the tension between them easily.

“I’ll just go get the TV set up, then,” he says, “and you can bring that in,” and he turns away without waiting for a response.

Alec stares after him with his heart feeling like it’s about to crawl out of his throat, his pulse pounding in his ears. It occurs to him, not for the very first time but with a new and incredible clarity, that Magnus didn’t just agree to go out with him on a whim — it may be very early days, but they’re _both_ in this all the way, ready to jump in with both feet. All the things he’s been feeling, the way Magnus has never been far from the top of his mind since the very first time they met, the way he makes Alec’s blood sing — all of those things aren’t just happening for him. Magnus is experiencing the same things, or very similar things; Magnus wants him, just as surely as he wants Magnus. And they might have something, together, if he can be a little patient, if he can wait and see.

“Yeah,” he says belatedly, after Magnus has already left the room. He’s alone, but in a moment he’ll go in the other room and Magnus will be there again, and he’s smiling, and his happiness leaks through into his voice. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”


End file.
